


we made it out it seems (i think i’m ready to grow)

by heistsociety



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, basically a jean character study, but it’s kind of about his birthdays, jean is a dark bby, very briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 05:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14928152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heistsociety/pseuds/heistsociety
Summary: In the Nest, they don’t celebrate birthdays. Time passing has never been a joyous occasion, a reminder that Tetsuji is no longer young and that Riko never has been.orJean Moreau, through the birthdays.





	we made it out it seems (i think i’m ready to grow)

**Author's Note:**

> this is not proofread so excuse any mistakes. it was also written on my phone. but it’s my friends bday so here u go wish her a happy bday

In the Nest, they don’t celebrate birthdays. Time passing has never been a joyous occasion, a reminder that Tetsuji is no longer young and that Riko never has been.

Maybe Jean’s family celebrated birthdays Before (and he thinks of life this way, Before The Nest and After The Nest because those are the only ways he’s ever known life), but he doesn’t remember them if he did.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. The first birthday that passes under Riko’s control is the first one that he remembers, bloodied and beaten and shaking as he reaches up to the wall behind his bed with trembling fingers and slowly draws a crooked line.

One year in the Nest. A lifetime more to go.

He gets up the next sixteen-hour morning and tries to cling on to the faded sound of his father’s laugh, his mother’s smile. He doesn’t know if he wants to remember them at all. Once upon a time, he’d asked himself why his parents would be so willing to give him up to the Moriyamas. Lying on the cold stone floors of the Nest, purple spreading across his bruised jaw and sharp empty pain in the places where his ribs should be whole, he comes up with answers.

They never wanted him.

He is broken.

He is awful.

He is disgusting.

He doesn’t deserve to be loved.

And he believes every one of them.

Kevin Day looks at him with something like pity in his eyes, like he wants to say something but he doesn’t know how, like he’s mocking Jean. Jean bites back a snarl at the number plastered across Kevin’s cheek. He doesn’t need pity. He needs a way out.

The window of escape narrows every year he’s there.

His tenth birthday, he spends with broken fingers. He plays with broken fingers.

His eleventh, deep bloody gashes criss-crossing his stomach.

His twelfth, Riko pushes him down the stairs and watches with a blank manic smile as he falls.

His thirteenth, he tries biting back when Riko swings a fist at him. It’s the last time he ever does.

His fourteenth is a blur of pain and voices and threats and he bites into his tongue trying not to cry.

By fifteen, hollow, gaunt, an Exy machine, he forgets when his birthday is. He forgets his birthday, forgets his mother’s smile and his father’s laugh and the way the waves sounded crashing against the sand and the smell of ocean air in Marseille.

Time passes differently in the Nest. Even if he repeats his birthday to himself in quiet murmurs after everyone’s asleep, tracing the tally marks as he tries to remember what hope feels like, he can never be sure which day it is in the real world. Maybe the Nest is the real world. Maybe Marseille was a dream. Maybe Marseille was a nightmare.

His sixteenth birthday is the first time Riko lets another Raven into his bed. And then again. And again. Until he learns to stop fighting back, until he learns to go limp, until every little spark inside of him has been smothered, until he is completely subordinate because there is nothing Riko won’t do.

Except put him out of his misery, maybe. Except the one thing that he wants, maybe. Except kill him, maybe.

(At least Riko can never kill rebellion.)

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

He sees the sky again. It doesn’t mean much. The world knows his name, knows the three inked against his cheekbone. It doesn’t mean much at all.

Nineteen.

Kevin’s gone. Riko’s especially merciless on February 22nd.

Twenty.

Renee Walker has the most brilliant smile he’s ever seen. She looks like the sun. She is the sun. More than anything, she looks like a savior.

It doesn’t mean much to a boy who thinks he can’t be saved. Not until Renee Walker, all pastel hair and benevolence, barges into the Nest and tells Jean that they’re leaving.

He can hardly breathe.

He spends the next few days, weeks, months, waiting to be taken back. But he never is.

Renee dutifully stays at his side while he recovers, and then he leaves one sun to orbit another.

Jeremy Knox is something of a conundrum. He doesn’t treat Jean like a skittish wild animal. He’s perfectly happy to chatter on about anything, everything, while Jean cuts in with only cutting remarks, and he’s perfectly happy to stay silent when Jean doesn’t want to talk. He jokes. Smiles. Laughs. Doesn’t touch Jean unless he’s comfortable with it. He takes what Jean will give him and nothing more. About Marseille. The Nest. Anything and everything. He gives himself back to Jean. When Jean insults him, his eyes sparkle like the two of them know something that the rest of he world doesn’t, and he takes a good-natured jab back.

If Renee was a savior, then Jeremy is a rebirth.

(“You know you can disagree with me.”

Jean doesn’t reply for a long time.

“Okay.”)

He doesn’t mean it until he meets Laila Dermott and Sara Alvarez, who are unashamedly loud and argue with Jeremy constantly and all Jeremy does is send an exasperated eye roll in Jean’s direction. He’s still smiling.

(Laila and Alvarez are forces of nature. They prod at Jean’s boundaries, but don’t push them, they make him watch ridiculous movies and tell him about their lives without asking about his in return.

They are, Jean realizes with a start one day, his friends.)

He doesn’t mean it until he wakes up from a nightmare, soaked with sweat, heart beating out of his chest, waiting until he calms to make sure he hasn’t woken Jeremy up, only to find thrown back covers and an empty bed.

He finds Jeremy in the Trojan court, throwing Exy balls against the plexiglass. From the mess, it looks like he’s been there a while. Jean knocks against the glass to get his attention before heading in.

Jeremy has messy hair and bags under his eyes and he looks surprised to see Jean.

(“So you’ll take all of my trauma, but refuse to talk about your own?”

“I don’t want to burden you.”

Jean is decidedly unimpressed. “Jeremy.”

“Jean.” He sighs. Sits down. Puts his head in his hands. Jean has never seen him like this. “What if I’m not good enough?”)

He doesn’t mean it until he realizes that, for all his cheer, Jeremy is decidedly human.

(“I don’t want to be him,” Jeremy whispers.

Jean doesn’t have to ask who he means. “You could never be him.” And it’s the truth.)

The next day, Jean tells Jeremy very bluntly that one of his ideas reaches the very magnitude of stupid, and it might just be about what movie they’re going to watch, but even as Jeremy makes an offended noise, his eyes are crinkling up happily.

Jean prefers this version of Jeremy. He prefers the single dimple on the right side of his mouth and the way the light catches on his hair and when the sun filters through the window just right, Jeremy has a smattering of freckles across his nose that Jean thinks might be the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

On his twenty-first birthday, Renee sends him a two word text with far too many exclamation points. Jean ignores his phone as it buzzes on the coffee table, but Jeremy looks from the text to Jean with wide eyes.

“You didn’t tell me it was your birthday!” He says, as accusing as he ever gets.

Jean shrugs. “I didn’t think it was important. Ravens don’t celebrate their birthdays.”

Jeremy makes a noise at the back of his throat, something like a strangled cat and immediately calls Laila and Alvarez.

And Jean’s never celebrated his birthday before, or maybe he has, but that was Marseille and that was a long time ago and this is California and Jeremy doesn’t throw a big party, just him and Laila and Alvarez and Jean and a poorly made cake and terrible singing and flimsy paper hats. And for all his grumbling, Jean still makes a wish as he blows out his candles.

Don’t let this end.

And this is the first birthday that Jean remembers being uninjured.

And happy.

And surrounded by people he loves.

Renee calls him that night to tell him happy birthday again and Jean thanks her for getting him out again.

And Kevin sends a single Happy birthday text that Jean doesn’t reply to, not until February 22nd.

He spends the next year training with Laila and telling Alvarez she’s an idiot and playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Jeremy. And he’s never been good enough for Jeremy, not even close, but they kiss in their dorm when Jeremy finally works up the nerve to be confrontational and it’s a promise that they’re going to try.

So they do. Jean sleeps better when it’s with Jeremy and Jean follows Jeremy down to the court when Jeremy’s too antsy and insecure to sleep and they make breakfast together while Jeremy sings showtunes and tries to get Jean to dance and they get caught making out in the court by Laila and Alvarez, who tease them mercilessly as though it’s never happened to them (it has. Multiple times.) and Jean meets Jeremy’s family over Christmas break as his boyfriend and Jean has never had a family before, but Jeremy takes the role gracefully.

By his twenty-second birthday, Jeremy has already graduated, but he flies in to spend the weekend with Jean. Alvarez makes a huge deal of it, like she does with every birthday, and this time, the cake actually looks like a cake instead of a lump of clay.

Jean blows out his twenty-second candles to the sound of terrible singing and finds that he has nothing to wish for.


End file.
